Hi everyone from Down Under on a bright Monday morning.

Interesting that today's Australian newspaper carried some stories on the
Nobel Peace Prize going to Al Gore and the UN Climate Change panel's work,
for the former for his work in the making an promoting of the film 'An
Inconvenient Truth'...

Interesting also that 'An Inconvenient Truth' is reported as now being sent
to British secondary schools.  It's probably unfortunate that a number (9
identified ones) of the film's facts have been questioned by sceptics
(especially those making the even more controversial films ' The Great
global Warming Swindle', and the forthcoming 'Apocalypse No').

However, despite some of the concerns about 'An Inconvenient Truth's' flaws,
this does however appear and an admirable and ideal channel to stimulate
debate on this important subject, both in schools and elsewhere, especially
as there is now a direct link to it and this years Nobel Peace Prize.
Community resilience is an issue which concerns a number of us DRR
practitioners - perhaps we could use as a starting point this Al Gore film,
and build on that ...

Interestingly enough we include community resilience when we teach our
Disaster Risk Management (DRM) workshop - see
www.torqaid.com/content/files/documents/Bangladesh%20DRM.pdf
This being in comparing and contrasting communities responses to recent
events such as flooding in Bangladesh with that of New Orleans
(post-Katrina).

Cheers

Chris        

Chris Piper, Director TorqAid (and geographer..)
PO Box 13, Torquay
VIC 3228, Australia
Tel:  +61 41 2497317
Email:  [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] 
Website:  www.torqaid.com
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Natural hazards and disasters
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ben Wisner
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 8:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Characteristics of a Disaster-resilient Community

Yes, yes, Elaine, John, and Charles!

Taking all your comments on board, I think that Elaine has the trump card.
A couple of 12 year olds in Australia have caused quite a flap by publishing
a scathing criticism of government's failure to inform children about
hazards, especially those associated with climate change, and have called
for a youth world summit on risk education in April 2007.  Many of you
probably have seen this announcement.

So there is a need, a hunger, for ACCESSIBLE information.  Some of this can
take a very straight forward form as physical geography -- accessible if
well taught in an hands on manner, and geographers have been quite attuned
to pedagogy in recent years.  Yet how does one raise the BIG questions --
the questions about root causes of disaster vulnerability?  It could well be
one accessible vehicle is via literature.  Sci Fi is part of that.

John is correct, of course, that there are dystopias as well in this genre.
At the moment the dytopian outweighs the utopian probably by an order of
magnitude.  I have read a dozens of apocalyptic tales of climate change of
the past few years.  (Ah, how you know what I do when I kick back!)

I have had undergrads view and review films that take up environmental
themes in fictional form from "Solent Green" to "The Day After Tomorrow." My
students also read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" and try to understand why
that book was so influential and how these films may, or may not, have
influence over popular perceptions.

An important issue is how one deals with mis-information and bad science
when they surface in fiction.

In any case, I am encouraged to move ahead with this kind of review.  I'd
encourage international list server participants to contact me with titles
in French, Spanish, German -- in fact, any and all languages.  I wonder, for
that matter, what lessons about resilience one might glean from the Bhagavad
Gita or the Heart Sutra?

All the best, BEN

-----Original Message-----
>From: Elaine Enarson <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Oct 13, 2007 4:18 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Characteristics of a Disaster-resilient Community
>
>Ben, when we start analyzing resilience through sci-fi, I dibs Ursula Le
>Guinn! Could be a great teaching and training approach and leads also to
>working with secondary teachers to integrate some of these writings and
>ideas from a DRR perspective. For the same reasons, I'd look at
>international children's literature and then of course all kinds of
cultural
>workers as you say. Nope, I don't think we're in our dotage--not quite yet!
>It's a good idea.
>
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>10:15 AM
>